HOW ARE WE DOING? A SURVEY TO HELP US IMPROVE RMN

author=Deckiller
ideally, our forums should be used for skill building, gammak theory, and so forth. not as a time waster. but I'm guilty of wasting a shit ton of time too so I don't wanna sound hypocritical.

I agree strongly with this; I'd personally want to see General Discussion and Welp excised (and probably add a subforum solely for forum games AND NOTHING ELSE) and force people to move all that discussion to social media where it belongs can be quarantined. There's no compelling reason for a hobby community to discuss non-hobby stuff, particularly when there's controversy involved. It's like going to the swimming pool to play football: that's just not the appropriate place for it.

But then, I understand that part of the appeal of this place for a lot of users is the casual atmosphere, and the off-topic stuff IS mostly confined to its own areas, so I'm not really gonna make a Thing of it, beyond occasionally bitching in relevant threads.

Also I am 100% for having statuses that have nothing to do with anything, which might make me a hypocrite, but IDGAF.

author=Mirak
Hey i just joined this forum a year ago and i would like to know if this one is going to do the same as all the others and get erased from existence before i even get to know people here, because so far it's creepy how similar the situation is with said defunct sites.

I feel like RMN has been around long enough that it's likely to keep going from intertia if nothing else. If you're worried about a lack of posting, maybe make a few topics for discussion of actual game stuff or something. Or make dumb posts in statuses. Whatevs. v:Vv

author=Jeroen_Sol

author=Sooz
But then, I understand that part of the appeal of this place for a lot of users is the casual atmosphere

Exactly. Many of us are in the forums 80% of the time, sometimes doing some gamedev and events inbetween. This has been the case for years, and as such notions of deleting the forums in anything but a joke is highly offputting to me.

RMN is, and should remain, open to any and all people who dabble in indie gamedev. That includes those who only do it very sporadically and would rather just play forum games in welp most of the time.

I mean this seriously and not to be taken as an attack but: why should RMN provide that? How does yours and others ability to do things besides gamedev fit into the site's goals? One thing cannot be everything.

Why should RMN provide that? Simple. Because it has in the past. For years. For longer than many of my friends on this website have been members of RMN. The forums have become an integral part of RMN, whether it fits in with RMN's original goals or not. That isn't something that can simply be dismissed. The forums are part of what defines RMN, just like the gamepages. Just like the blogs. Just like the reviews. Just like the scripts.

I'm sorry if I come across as offended. It's because I am. I'm trying to remain as civil as I can, but I'm a little apalled. The notion of deleting the forums to me is saying me and my friends are not welcome here. I've seen it said as a joke countless times in the past, and rolled my eyes at it all the time, but now people are seriously debating it. Needless to say that after being a member for over 6 years, that doesn't sit well with me.

I guess my main point is that I think it's not useful to think of RMN in terms of its goals. RMN is more than a website. It's a community. A community isn't defined by its goals. It's defined by its members. And the forums are important to many members.

I wasn't suggesting deleting the forums. I wanted to know why you felt that what used to be a game development social platform is obligated to have non-development forums.

Tradition doesn't hold a lot of sway to me. And I want to point out that what "defines" RMN has changed a lot. It launched with a large forum, small game area. Then it went to a smaller forum and huge game area. Point being that what are "traditions" can easily fade or new ones spring up. It used to be a tradition to make a new topic in the forum for your game.

Don't assume the balance between site and forum is a new discussion. I've been having it since I built the place 11 years ago.

EDIT: Red, doesn't that feedback belong in the gamepages, though? Reviews, blogs, images, comments, and all that stuff is on the gamepage. What purpose does the forum serve for that?

author=Red_Nova
Either way, I think they are necessary additions for developers in varying degrees of obviousness. There were (and still are) plenty of people with absolutely no interest in making games themselves that are just as vital to the development process. Testers, reviewers, let's players, and even casual players all contribute by providing feedback for games in various ways. Removing even the casual forums would be a huge block for those types of people, which in turn would mean less feedback for developers, which I think goes directly against RMN's goal.

Obviously I'm not saying that forums are for players only and not devs, but that reason alone makes them worth keeping, in my opinion.

Thing is, if you were to remove the forums, it doesn't mean that kind of activity needs to stop. It would simply move to a better place, on the gamepage. Testers and reviewers and let's players don't NEED the forums to communicate with the devs. The gamepages are designed to cover all that. At the bottom of every game page...is a forum thread! The forums migrated a good portion of that discussion from the gamepages to the forums, which means less page views and activity on the gamepages. People spend their time browsing the forums instead of browsing the gamepages.

If someone wants a tester/review/LP, they can post a blog. Then those people looking for "work" can browse the blog area to find out the pulse of the community. Instead of browsing the forums, which is a shit show most of the time. You have to weed out all the bullshit and nonsense to find actual game content. Right now if a person made a blog asking for help, it would likely not get as much attention as posting in a forum topic asking for the same thing. That is because the active members are used to finding that kind thing in the forums.

As far as advertising and getting yourself known, it's no different for someone to find your gamepage as opposed to finding your post or topic among the many that are there. With gamepages, a person can search for specific things that interest them. They can search by engine or genre and get an instant visual idea of what the game is.

On the forums you might post in the screenshot thread and for a short period of time maybe 10+ people will see it, then it's lost into the obsurity of xxx amount of pages in the screenshot thread. Nobody is going to see my screenshot thread post from a year ago and find my game. But those same people would have a significantly higher chance of coming across my gamepage I submitted a year ago, followed up with seeing all the content I've ever posted to the site which is in the gamepage. Not scattered across the galaxy that is the forums.

The site is actually designed around the idea of gamepages. You can subscribe and get notices for all activity on the gamepages. You can fully customize it and have different areas for different kinds of content. That was the core design of RMN. The forums dilute that to a degree and additions have been made to the forums to make them act more like gamepages, in that you can subscribe and get notices for them too. And now we've got statuses, which have 0 use other than saying pointless crap, further diluting the gamepage activity.

And Corf is off his rocker. It's interesting how he's the only person(or at least one of the few) complaining and he's one of the few active members to have been banned. He's the Trump of RMN, in that he sees bias and issues everywhere when they don't really exist. "The misaos are rigged". Next thing he'll be suggesting we build a wall along the gamepage/forum border and get users to donate to pay for it.

author=Link_2112
People spend their time browsing the forums instead of browsing the gamepages.

This is the same kind of argument that's used to say the LPs hurt game sales, and is just as false. People that go to the forums go there for the forums. If they wanted to go to the gamepages, they'd be going to the gamepages. If the forums weren't there, people wouldn't go to the gamepages more. They'd just go to RMN less.

Ah, I didn't see it. Sorry about that.

If RMN has no goal or purpose, why is there anything here? What brought anyone here? What did RMN do that was so unique to get someone to register? People aren't just randomly popping up and posting.

There's something that is bringing people here. According to the stats, it isn't the forum. But the community is also not the forum. Never has been. Equating the forum to the community is offensive to the rest of the site (and the bandwidth it is using).

The rationale of "it exists because a certain number of people want it to exist" is not good enough and isn't all that matters. Nothing works that way; especially when trying to run a community. RMN already has severe social problems with having everything scattered to the winds to serve small subsets. There's an IRC, Slack, Discord, Twitter, forum, user statuses, page comments, and so on. It's frankly a mess that has only gotten worse. Don't tell me people who know nothing about their peers makes for a better community.

author=Red_Nova
Latest blogs show up on the forums, giving a potential draw to a new game some people may not have known about otherwise. Screenshot threads do the same thing, just with more eye candy. Comments show up in the latest posts. These are all useful avenues that help bring exposure to games. I know I've been exposed to certain games from these previous methods that I doubt I would ever have known about otherwise.

While people are relaxing and hanging out on the casual forums, they can see all this activity on gamepages and potentially be drawn new games and eventually deliver this useful feedback.

The fact latest blogs show up on the forums is a huge god damn indicator something is wrong, not right. Same with the screenshot topic. These are implementations actively hurting the cohesion of the site.

I won't accept your apology, because you didn't do anything to apologize for. I think this discussion is absolutely pertinent to the topic! How can a person know how to do a better job if there isn't an understanding of expectation?

I do want to say: the forum is a crucial piece of the community. I didn't mean for it to come off like I was opposed to it. I've spent a lot of my life posting in forums and I'm not alone. RMN definitely wouldn't be anything like what it is without a forum.

If you feel like you derailed the topic, we can discuss it further in PM. Not that it matters what I have to say these days, but it could make for a good conversation.

author=Jeroen_Sol
I just got really flustered at people talking so seriously about getting rid of something that has been such a large part of my internet identity for so many years. My apologies.

P. sure it was just two people- neither of whom has ANY power over the site- casually spitballing about it, mang. Deep breaths.

author=Craze
i mean your post on link's game was complaining about yourself

Sure, if that's how you choose to read it.